They’d given her thirty minutes in the preparation room and permission to bring the paper she’d written the day before. Small mercies.

  They could have made her walk in empty-handed, unarmed but for memory, fumbling through a panic-blank mind.

  At least it meant they weren’t setting her up to fail, not this time.

  Her fingertips ghosted over her pocket. The faint, cool outline of the coins pressed back.

  Two good lucks. One from Kion, one from Caustic.

  It would be fine. It had to be.

  Then Caustic knocked, measured, unhurried, and waited until she rose. Without a word, he turned and walked ahead, pace steady, never forcing her to hurry. The path to the interrogation room was clear before her, his presence making it easier to follow.

  They stopped before the door. Caedern leaned casually against the wall beside it, already waiting. The grin on his face was the sort that didn’t need words. Sharp with amusement, like he’d already seen the shape of the ending.

  Caedern’s presence was already enough to pull the air taut. He didn’t speak at first, just drew out a neatly folded robe.

  “For the show,” he said finally, voice smooth, almost casual.

  Writ blinked. Her fingers froze mid-air as she considered it. The robe was dark, trimmed with threads that caught the light just so. Judge division. His division. Authority distilled into fabric.

  Of course he had suggested this assignment. Of course.

  She hesitated, heart tapping a rhythm she tried to suppress. To wear it was to step fully into their stage, to acknowledge the roles they’d chosen for her. To let them shape the performance before the questions even began.

  Her fingers brushed the hem. It felt heavier than it looked, almost a weight pressing down on her shoulders, her spine, her chest. She swallowed.

  She unfolded it carefully, dragging her arms through the sleeves as if testing how much of herself she could keep beneath the authority stitched into the cloth. Every motion was deliberate, clipped, efficient. Masking the small tremor that raced from her fingertips to her core.

  Caedern’s lips quirked. Not quite a smile, not quite a sneer. “Good. It suits you.”

  A flicker of heat ran along her chest, a subtle tug she suppressed. Her posture didn’t waver. Her breath stayed even.

  The fabric settled over her, and she realized she could feel the weight of their expectations more acutely than the threads themselves. She adjusted the collar, straightened the hem, and took a breath.

  This is still me. I am still me.

  The thought was fragile, a whispered promise in the midst of imposed ritual. And yet, even as she made the mental anchor, a flicker of fear slithered along her ribs.

  The show was about to begin.

  She stepped back, letting Caedern examine her posture, her composure. He nodded once, satisfied. And in that single motion, the silent command landed.

  The world was watching, and she had to perform.

  The robe’s fabric brushed against her fingertips as she settled it one last time. Tiran had never given her one. Harbringer had no official attire. No robes, no colors, no symbols. They moved in shadows, unseen, unadorned. No costumes. No audience. No show. Just the work.

  Her pulse spiked, each heartbeat hammering against her ribs as if testing the weight of invisible eyes. The corridor felt smaller, the air tighter, every silent observer pressing against her. Even the faintest sound of her own breath felt loud, intrusive. The fabric clung to her like a tether, a constant reminder that she was exposed, performing under an audience she couldn’t see.

  And still, she adjusted the collar, squared her stance, and drew in a steadying breath. She would survive the stage. She had to.

  “The subject is inside,” he said, smirk curling deeper, “enter when you’re ready.”

  She nodded once.

  Inhale. Hold.

  Exhale. Hold.

  The mask slid into place the one that let nothing through, not doubt, not heat, not the tremor that wanted to climb her throat.

  She was ready. Or ready enough.

  Her palm found the cool metal of the handle. She pushed the door open and stepped through, each footfall deliberate.

  Caedern followed, the smirk wiped clean from his face, leaving only a flat, unreadable watchfulness.

  Caustic did not join them. He remained outside the room, posted at the threshold.

  The interrogation room was the same as always. Sterile, cold, scrubbed of warmth.

  Enchantment clung to the air, metallic on her tongue, its constant hum pricking at the edge of her hearing.

  The overhead light flickered just enough to remind her it was there.

  On one side, a mirror spanned the middle half of the wall, framed by stone above and below. From her side it only cast her reflection back, stark, strange under the light, while unseen eyes studied every breath, every twitch.

  She walked straighter, smoothing her posture into something precise. If they wanted a performance, she would give one.

  The file in her hand felt heavier than its weight should allow. Her pulse refused to settle into rhythm, and each breath scraped shallow in her chest. She counted them anyway, clinging to the ritual like a worn prayer bead.

  The man at the table, Rowan, rose slowly, a small bow marking her approach. When his gaze lifted to her face, it didn’t stay there. It dipped to the collar at her throat, lingered.

  And as if answering him, the collar on her neck pulsed once, a faint, warm throb.

  She stopped a measured distance away, chair at her back.

  Up close, Rowan was a study in frayed edges. Black hair falling in messy arcs around his face, thick-rimmed glasses hiding tired eyes, the lines of a straight nose, the faint angularity of his jaw. No tremor in his limbs, only the steadying rhythm of long, deliberate breaths.

  She sat first. He followed. Caedern took his own seat off to her left, a silent shadow against the wall.

  The file cracked open beneath her fingers, paper rasping faintly. Her own handwriting stared back at her.

  Here goes nothing.

  The weight of silence shifted. This time, it was her voice that carried.

  “State your name and role in the Hall of Accordance,” she said, tone crisp, flat.

  “Rowan Brennan... Senior researcher. Chasm Lily Facility,” his voice was low, eyes sliding down to his shoes.

  She underlined the details without looking up.

  “When did you begin work at Chasm Lily?”

  “Eleven years.”

  “What did you have clearance to see or handle during the cure project?”

  He hesitated, “...Blissbane cure. I was tasked to do research on the flower’s effect and... how to negate them, since the first time they found it six years ago. Year 1219.”

  Her pen paused mid-mark, though her face stayed neutral. Six years. Tir Rynhaar had begun searching for their queen’s cure only two years ago. The Accord had been at it four years before that.

  She wrote anyway.

  “Tell me what you know about the current cure stage.”

  His eyes wavered.

  They flicked sideways to Caedern. She followed the glance without turning her head. Caedern sat utterly still, face carved in stone.

  Rowan’s gaze dropped to his shoes, “the first cure was synthesized that same year. Midyear. Tested on researchers and retrieval teams who opened the site. Needed several doses to clear the blight.”

  “‘Several.’ How many?”

  “Three to seven. Depends on the body and the severity.”

  “And the latest version?”

  “After Bronze shared the composition... one to three doses now. Still depends on severity.”

  So Kion was right. The one given to her was the real cure. Probably.

  Her pen scratched the page, “who else had access to this data alongside you?”

  “Only those tied to the Chasm Lily project. We weren’t permitted to speak of it outside the facility.”

  Her pen moved again. Then she lifted her eyes, voice sharper.

  “You’ve tried to tell something to someone outside the facility. Who was it?”

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  He shifted, right hand closing over his left arm. No answer.

  “Your late wife’s family?”

  Silence.

  “Old friends from the academy?”

  Nothing.

  She let the silence stretch, her gaze narrowing, the weight of it meant to press.

  Then, the final test, “Bronze Concord?”

  He flinched.

  The whispers from Graverel slid back into her mind, the group urging defection. And her own encounter, the trail-blockers who’d intercepted her.

  “The Glitter Group?”

  A tremor passed through his hands before he caught it.

  “Yes,” he said finally.

  So the same Glitter Group that had compromised her mission had also approached an Accord researcher, enough that he’d risk contacting them in return. But who had reached out first?

  “How do you know they exist?”

  His gaze skated away. Past the mirror, past the walls, past even the flicker of the light above. Anywhere but her. Anywhere but Caedern. The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was filled with the frantic pulse under his skin, with the weight of something he didn’t want to name.

  “Why did you contact them?”

  This time the silence deepened, settling thick between them. His jaw worked once, twice, a muscle jumping as though he chewed on the answer and forced it back down. His fingers flexed against his sleeve, nails pressing into fabric until his knuckles blanched. Each second stretched, his thoughts visible only in the fight written across his body.

  At last he shook his head, drew a long, steadying breath, and forced himself to meet her eyes.

  “This is just a show, isn’t it? A formality. You’ve already decided the verdict.”

  The desperation there was too familiar. A ghost from her own past, buried deep.

  She pushed it down.

  “That’s not the answer I asked for.”

  He looked away again. The silence that followed wasn’t simple refusal. It was the stubborn, deliberate act of holding his tongue even as the answer pressed at the back of it.

  “Save your opinions. Answer the question.”

  Still nothing. His mouth twitched as though he might speak, but he shut it again, teeth clenched against the words.

  “Did you contact them because you plan to leak the cure?”

  His response was clipped, ragged, “yes... and no.”

  “Elaborate.”

  Something in him buckled then. His composure, thin as glass, finally cracked.

  “Do you even know what they actually did? What they wanted me to make?” His voice rose, his hands cutting sharp arcs in the air.

  Caedern’s expression darkened. His fingers worked at something small, hidden.

  “Do you know what they use the cure for? What-”

  Rowan stopped. His gaze swept the room. Corners, ceiling, walls. Searching.

  Finding nothing, he looked straight at Caedern, who sat grim and alert.

  But he didn’t seem like he’d noticed Caedern’s gesture when he stopped. It felt the other way around. He stopped first, then noticed Caedern. Then what, exactly, had halted him?

  Rowan’s hands dropped too quickly, fumbling against his knees before he forced himself back into his chair. His shoulders hunched, folding in as though he could make himself smaller, less visible, less accountable.

  Something was wrong.

  What stopped him? Sudden realization? Or something else?

  Her senses stretched outward. No mana threads, no telepathic hum, no shimmer of invisibility. Nothing foreign pressed against her skin.

  Her gaze flicked sideways. Caedern’s hand had stilled, his preparation precise, timed to interrupt. But Rowan hadn’t stopped because of that. He’d already broken off before noticing.

  Which meant... what?

  His silence wasn’t surrender. It was the silence of someone who’d learned the cost of speaking too far.

  And Caedern’s movement, too exact, too ready, sat in the corner of her thoughts like a warning she wasn’t meant to miss.

  He didn’t want Rowan to say it.

  They already knew. They didn’t want her to know.

  Was that why? What were they trying to keep hidden? What was the cure really used for? The leash-and-control rumors? And if they didn’t want her to know, why put her here at all?

  Not now. Focus.

  “You stopped yourself. Why?” she asked, voice quiet but unrelenting.

  No answer.

  She tapped her pen against the file. Wven, deliberate.

  “Now, answer what I asked you. Did you contact them because you plan to leak the cure?”

  “...Yes.”

  “You said ‘yes and no’ before. Why?”

  “Because... there’s anothe-” he blinked, stopped.

  Paused, then resumed calmly, “because you probably already consider... things... since-”

  She saw Caedern’s hand shift again, ready. Rowan caught himself. Stilled.

  The hawk still watched.

  Writ leaned forward, her voice steady. Knowing this line would go nowhere, she shifted to the next question on her list, "what do you think of the current cure policy?"

  Rowan’s fingers curled loosely around the edge of the chair, “it’s unfair.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the version without additives is reserved for internal use only.”

  Without additives.

  Then there was another version, one laced with something. Was it the same one Caedern had described? The thing that hollowed a person out, left them a walking corpse the Accord could steer from afar?

  Her eyes flicked toward Caedern, a silent question. He gave the smallest shake of his head. A warning.

  So she moved on.

  “Do you think the cure should exist?”

  “Yes,” his jaw shifted, as if chewing on something unsaid, “and it should be spread outside too, not just internal. That’s why I agreed at first. I thought I was helping people.”

  Writ’s eyes narrowed a fraction, “if, at the start, you’d known it would only be for internal use... would you still have joined Chasm Lily?”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  She tilted her head slightly, “even if it meant you couldn’t feed your family, because of the bankruptcy?”

  “Yes.”

  The word landed, then lingered. His gaze drifted to the side, breath held a fraction too long.

  “And they might still be alive,” he said, quieter now, “if I hadn’t accepted in the first place.”

  She let the answer hang in the air, letting the faint hum of the surveillance wards fill the silence in place of her voice. Her pen hovered over the open file for a heartbeat before she set it down, flat against the page.

  The file closed under her hand with a slow, even motion. Paper rasped against paper, the sound dry and final. She kept her eyes on Rowan the entire time, measuring him, letting the quiet stretch just long enough to force a shift in his posture.

  Leaning back slightly, not in relaxation, but in controlled withdrawal, she created a sliver of space. A break in the rhythm that still carried the weight of her stare. The pen tapped once against the cover. A sound too soft to be idle.

  When she finally spoke, her voice was even, cool, and final, “That will be all… for now.”

  The last two words didn’t belong to Rowan. They belonged to someone else in the room. She didn’t look at Caedern, but caught the barest flicker of movement in her peripheral vision. His small, almost imperceptible nod. A signal received.

  Caedern rose, his movements unhurried, stepping into the narrow space between them.

  “As per directive we mentioned before this session,” he said, “both parties are allowed one question. Off record. Interrogator first. The subject may respond with one question in turn.”

  A pause, measured.

  “After you’re done, this session is dismissed. The subject may return.”

  Then he walked to the door and left without looking back, leaving them in the humming quiet.

  She knew better than to believe in 'off record' under Accord surveillance. Nothing here was truly unwatched. But this might be her only chance.

  She let the supposed freedom of it hang, weighing it against the dull ache of too many unanswered threads. The queen’s lingering illness. The whispered threat. The way Caedern had nearly cut Rowan off earlier. If she didn’t ask now, the door might close forever.

  The pen rolled once between her fingers, the faint click masking the shift in her tone.

  “Tell me,” she said, voice low but steady, “in your research... was there ever a variant of the cure designed to influence its taker’s will?”

  Rowan’s eyes lifted to her, then flicked briefly toward the upper corner of the room.

  When they returned to her, they were a fraction wider. And different. Not the wary, hunted look of someone cornered by an interrogator, but the searching look of someone who’d just recognized a fellow prisoner.

  Then he smiled, not with humor, but with something quiet and sad. As if a piece had just fallen into place.

  “That’s what I refused to make,” he said, “but they seem to have found someone else willing to make it.”

  She gave a small nod, her expression neutral, though confusion stirred beneath it. A knot tightened in her chest.

  Why the sudden shift? What had he just seen in her? What was hidden in that glance that she herself couldn’t grasp?

  Her senses stretched outward again, brushing against the boundaries of the room. Nothing. No shift in air, no whisper of a third presence.

  But then he spoke, breaking her focus on sensing.

  “...When they finalize the verdict,” Rowan said, “can you make it fast?”

  She stilled.

  They finalize the verdict.

  Not you.

  “Please?” His voice was quieter now, almost breaking, “at this point, I just want to see my wife and daughter again...”

  She blinked once, slow, weighing her answer.

  “I can’t promise anything,” she said, “but if I’m holding the blade, I will.”

  Something in his shoulders loosened, the faintest relief softening his face. When he spoke again, it wasn’t bitterness or performance, but something bare and startlingly genuine.

  “Thank you.”

  The words landed heavier than they should have. Not the empty reflex of courtesy, but sincere, almost reverent. It unsettled her more than his silence had.

  She hadn’t decided how to read the shift in him. The softening, the gratitude, the way his gaze lingered on her as if she’d given him something real. And now, layered atop that, was his final gift of sincerity. She didn’t know what to do with it.

  The silence stretched. She realized, belatedly, that she’d gone too still, too deep into thought. The weight of his voice and the strange echo of his relief had pulled her under, made her forget the simplest next step.

  “You’re dismissed,” she said at last.

  He nodded, rose, and left without another word.

  The door closed, and she let her breath out in a long, slow exhale. Leaning back, she let her gaze rest on the ceiling.

  Her turn would come next. Questions aimed at her instead of through her. The blunders she’d made would be picked apart, and Accord had already omitted something. Caedern looked ready to act on that omission. His questionable maneuvers wouldn’t shield her. They might only sharpen the blade aimed at her.

  What had he been searching for in that room? What had tipped Rowan? And would they believe she had no part in it? She barely knew the man. She had no reason to send him signals. They should know that. They had to.

  The door swung open.

  Caedern entered at his own pace. She stood immediately, spine straightening. The too-wide grin had returned, erasing the stoic mask he’d worn through the session.

  “How do you feel?” he asked, smirk curling at the edge.

  “...Manageable.”

  He chuckled, “enjoying the power trip so far?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Really? Doesn’t his half-respect, half-fear look make you feel something?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “You even managed to push his button far enough until he almost exploded. You’re a natural.”

  “...I’m honored you think so.”

  “Too bad he acted a little... unique. And you’ll have to explain the why.”

  She blinked once, too long. He had just named her exact fear, that she would have to explain a shift she hadn’t caused and didn’t understand.

  The air seemed to thicken, stretching the moment taut. Her breath caught in her chest, held, then released too shallow. She stared at the table between them, at the faint grain of wood, at anything but his eyes. The silence drew on, heavy, almost deliberate, her mind circling but refusing to land.

  “Say something,” he pressed, “I thought you’d have more bite. Do it more,” his tone carried the careless cruelty of someone prodding an animal for sport.

  She met his expectant gaze, weighing whether to take the bait.

  Finally, her voice low but steady, “then... can I have access to the full Blissbane files? I need to understand what might have affected him, before I write tomorrow’s report.”

  Caedern’s grin sharpened, eyes glinting like he’d just handed her a double-edged sword, “now that’s the bite I wanted to see.”

  “But apparently, that access isn’t mine to give,” he said smoothly, voice laced with amusement, “you’ll have better luck in Bronze's Kesherra.”

  He let the words hang between them. A pointed reminder that sometimes the truth lies with the enemy, or at least beyond the gates they controlled.

  Writ’s eyes flicked away, sharp and calculating, the unspoken challenge settling like a stone in her gut.

  She stayed silent.

  “You’re dismissed. Tiran’s office tomorrow, fourteen hundred hours. Prepare your report.”

  “Understood.”

  “Now get some rest. You’ll need it.” He paused, grin deepening, “unless you’d like to accompany me for another session.”

  “Thank you for the offer, but I’ll take my leave.”

  “Pity,” he said, smirk sharpening, “go now, before I’m tempted to keep you here.”

  Caedern made a subtle motion toward the the robe she wore, just enough for her to notice.

  She took it, slipping the fabric from her shoulders. The tension embedded in the threads, the weight of every eye she imagined pressing down on her back and chest, eased in an almost tangible way. Her spine relaxed slightly, the air inside the chamber feeling less sharp, less confining.

  She folded it neatly and returned it to Caedern. He received it with a brief nod, almost casual, yet somehow carrying the unspoken acknowledgment of the performance just endured.

  Her pulse still hummed, but the immediate burden had lifted. She took the files and nodded fractionally, then left with measured steps.

  The door shut behind her, and her steps broke into a near-run. She wasn’t staying in the crocodile’s mouth when she had the choice.

  Not with the report ahead of her. Not with tomorrow coming like a blade she couldn’t turn away.

  And no matter how much she wanted the day to end here, she knew the night would pass, and the blade would be waiting. She would walk to it herself, step by step, until the jaws closed.